Providing system administrators with such guidance informs them how to securely
configure systems under their control in a variety of network roles. Policy
makers and baseline creators can use this catalog of settings, with its
associated references to higher-level security control catalogs, in order to
assist them in security baseline creation. This guide is a
catalog, not a
checklist,
and satisfaction of every item is not likely to be possible or
sensible in many operational scenarios. However, the XCCDF format enables
granular selection and adjustment of settings, and their association with OVAL
and OCIL content provides an automated checking capability. Transformations of
this document, and its associated automated checking content, are capable of
providing baselines that meet a diverse set of policy objectives. Some example
XCCDF
Profiles
, which are selections of items that form checklists and
can be used as baselines, are available with this guide. They can be
processed, in an automated fashion, with tools that support the Security
Content Automation Protocol (SCAP).